Not since the days of Firefall have we been able to engage in the act of thumping. I am so happy to say that thumping has returned here in Em-8er!
That's right. Download the build. Log in. Seek out some resources. call down your thumper. Then protect it from the onrushing hordes of Tsi-hu and Knee bitters.
Now that you've done that.. What do you think? Sound off down below.
NOTE: This demo takes place on a new experimental, untextured landscape.
The larger working area is much nicer but shows a definitive need for a map.
The rocks falling from the sky to create a dynamic play-field for thumping is very nice. Keep these kinds of ideas going.
The pick-up range for the minerals is a little short and sometimes stuff doesn't get picked up. Running back from a fight to pick up is annoying. Losing minerals because they disappear is annoying. Expand the amount of time to pick-up minerals. Maybe have the Tsi-hu pick them up and try to run back to a portal?
This mode definitely shows a lack of viable weapons/equipment. Point defense tools would be useful.
Telling the amount of damage sustained by the THMPR is currently not possible, but a big UI overlaying info like Firefalls Thumper was a waste of space IMO. Lights and effects on the THMPR itself and a close-range UI for further details would be my suggested method for feedback.
Missiles are getting stuck if you're standing still on the launch vehicle this patch.
All in all a great look into the future waters of Em8er.
Great build the whole encounter is really fun can't wait to see where it goes!
-The sound of the rocks smashing into the ground is too loud
-The Tsi-Hu Fire and hit the thumper from really far away, I think the current distance is appropriate for sniper units and the regular guys should come closer as I need to go far from the thumper to kill them.
Some Bugs:
-Tsi-Hu that drop on the rocks stay stuck there or those that spawn really close to it
-Says another thumper is nearby even though the server is empty (I tried it close to the base/dropship area)
-Weird animations for the Tsi-Hu sometimes
-Missile Swarm blows up immediately sometimes. update: it happens if you fire it close to the upper green ring if you're under or above everything is fine
-If you Overthrust straight up during encounter and go back down the floating green ring become really small
-Mouse settings are still broken I need to open settings and hit "Apply" every time I open the game for the settings to apply
-Assault Rifle Fires once when shooting right after an ability, or coming out of gliding
Overall I'm impressed! The environment changes with the portal and the objects spawning in is a really nice touch and advancement from Firefall thumping. Definitely a promising start to the encounter!
Very glad to see the popcorn enemies being added! Blasting Aranha was incredibly satisfying, especially with the little bug pieces exploding everywhere.
I do miss the audio of the thumper pounding into the earth. It was like the heart beat of the encounter. It would be nice to have a similar audio effect in Ember.
I think the THMPR drilling needs to last longer in 1 spot. There's something that feels off to me with how short the drill animation is before the THMPR stops and wanders to a new spot. I would prefer the thumping staying in one location for 30 seconds, and the resources don't start to despawn until the Thumper stops and shuffles to a new location.
This would help with people being too far away fighting Tsi-hu to collect the resources and missing where the thumper last was in the mix of the chaos in order to collect their resources. They then could audibly hear when the thumping stops, and run to collect while the THMPR relocates itself.
On the other hand, I'd almost like to see the original idea of the enclosing shell around the THMPR when it drops that acts as a storage container for the resources. So when the THMPR drills it's funneled (or we have to collect and deposit ourselves?) into the storage container. In Firefall there was risk of losing all the resources if the thumper exploded. With Ember, you collect as you go so there's really no risk to not keep thumping. With a storage container that must "launch" back to base it could solve that. And also addresses the concerns of people stealing your resources while you are off fighting. Resources could be appropriately shared then as well.
Again, overall super excited to see the thumper encounter get fleshed out morel Excellent job to all the developers.
Edit - Down the road idea... it would be neat if on random thumping encounters the portal the Tsi-hu dropped would actually bring you to their world, and in there you'd experience a new type of THMPR encounter, and on top of earning exotic rare resources, you have to find/build your way back home through the portal.
Variations of the THMPR encounter in general would give it a longer shelf life.
Edit - Down the road idea... it would be neat if on random thumping encounters the portal the Tsi-hu dropped would actually bring you to their world, and in there you'd experience a new type of THMPR encounter, and on top of earning exotic rare resources, you have to find/build your way back home through the portal.
Variations of the THMPR encounter in general would give it a longer shelf life.[/QUOTE]
This has been in discussion before for the max tier terraforming on Em-8ER. So we all are pretty sure this will be in the works. Just have to be patient for that warping time to open before us.
I am excited to to give this build a try tonight. Stupid job....
Edit - Down the road idea... it would be neat if on random thumping encounters the portal the Tsi-hu dropped would actually bring you to their world, and in there you'd experience a new type of THMPR encounter, and on top of earning exotic rare resources, you have to find/build your way back home through the portal.
Variations of the THMPR encounter in general would give it a longer shelf life.
This has been in discussion before for the max tier terraforming on Em-8ER. So we all are pretty sure this will be in the works. Just have to be patient for that warping time to open before us.
I am excited to to give this build a try tonight. Stupid job....
I like the whitebox landscape a lot. It looks like a big moonscape. I personally favor this one over the beach biome (should I even terraform it...? ).
I like that we can see the pilot standing to get an idea of the size of the mech in comparison.
Some what sad the Dropship is not flying anymore perhaps it is stuck and a missing part of the dropship needs to be replaced before it can take off again.
This landscape is huge compared to Copa, i was a little bored with the same colour however the sliding down the big drops was very satisfying!
Sometimes it can be tricky to see suppose once it is textured and all looking great, things can be easier to see.
I was wondering if in xmas you get those cubes as presents and random cubes gives out a surprise gift
Those blocks falling from the sky some kind of inter-dimensional lollies.
A challenging thumping encounter i am glad those grapplers are not around!
I would like to place way points in such big places and even fire a flare to let others know of my location.
Could there be a range meter to indicate the distance of where a laser hits an object or by the sound waves of the scan not only indicating where the resource is but the range of the furthest sound wave before it dies out?
When this thread was busted, I posted in another thread my general feed back on my play throughs.
Here are some new thoughts.
====
THMPR Damage Visuals
It would be excellent to see the thumper get beat up and smashed and covered in burned patches from Tsi-Hu weaponry to indicate it's state of health.
It is so huge and massive and we are pretty much always near enough to it to see it, that all we need are some good visuals like that and perhaps some smoke and oil dripping off it or such to make it completely clear at a glance how it is doing.
We certainly would be better off with that than any giant UI element covering up the combat and obscuring the game play.
I will stick my post from the other thread here so we have it all together:
REPOST
I was with another person for a while, and we seemed to get more Tsi-Hu. They have left me all alone now.
Alone, there are not nearly enough Tsi-Hu although there seem enough whitebox critters. [EDIT: The glorious nature of the encounters being all different was apparant after a few were under my belt, and it was nice to have the variety. By chance the first few were easy...]
I enjoyed in FF smashing all the minor creatures and grabbing their drops of organic juices and bits. It was always satisfying to blow up a nest.
I find that my plasma canon runs out of juice too quickly relative to how little damage it does. If it did more damage, then it would make sense that it runs out so quickly. A direct hit on a Tsi-Hu does not kill him, and then soon I am out and waiting for a recharge. I would like a bit more power for the recharge rate currently.
My shoulder rockets bloom up too close to the camera for my liking when I launch them.
I enjoy the picking up of the resources and can see in hectic combat that it will be a fun dynamic to try to grab some good ones which are in the thick of combat or in a swarm of Tsi-Hu. [EDIT: Playing more which are increased in difficulty, I find this is 100% true.]
I agree with a post that it is different from FF where the risk is reduced as we lose nothing of what we have picked up already if the THMPR gets destroyed. The idea of colecting resources and then depositing them when the derp ship arrives is an interesting one, or having to fill up a collection box. I imagine, though, that when we are in a full on encounter, that may not matter as there will be lots of risk to try to pick them up in the first place. [EDIT: I have now done quite a few encounters, and when they are challenging, there is so much happening and so much to do protecting the THMPR that running around to pick them up and keeping them seems quite natural and fine as a mechanic. If I had to run around and pick them up and then drop them off, it would make the hard encounters (as solo) perhaps too hard as I constantly had to protect the THMPR and leaving it for even a short time had it ding ding dinged to death. With a multiplayer encounter, it would be different as some could focus on grabbing the resources and others on protecting the THMPR and the other players.
I am liking the assault rifle fire better, but it still feels to me a bit hard to aim and other than the shoulder rockets I do not feel godly in my destructive power. The shoulder rockets are really nice as a fire and forget weapon, but they make the regular weapons seem paltry in comparison. [EDIT: As I have now learned to swap as the plasma recharges and mix in deeep stryyykees, that feeling goes away.]
THE BAD: I just did another solo enounter. I never had any white cube portals spawn ever. I had only about 4 or 5 at most batches of Tsi-Hu each of 3 at a time pretty much the same spot. I had quite a few resource lumps that had "0" resources when I picked thum up. It was no challenge as no enemies spawned pretty much the entire encounter.
THE GOOD: I did another right after. It was hectic with lots of Tsi-Hu all over in random places, plenty of cube portals, and my THMPR got destroyed.
AND THE PRETTY: That is excellent that the nature of the two was so different, but the first one was not challenging enough. It will be EXCELLENT to have variation like this so that we never know what to expect. FF was flawed in that the encounters had known aspects to them that repeated from one to the other in terms of waves and what to expect as they progressed.
THEN THE PRETTY DAMNED GOOD: In a third solo as I am all alone still, it was in between the other two and once again I really enjoyed the fact that it was totally unknown what to expect. I enjoyed swapping from plasma to assault as I ran out of ammo or charge and flying up and DEEEEEEEEEppp stryking. It was the best so far. The fact that the plasma canon ran out, this time made me swap to the assault instead of complaining in the forum about the plasma canon. I was, in spite of solo, having lots of fun swapping weapons, hopping around, blasting and smashing. The only bad bit was that I found it hard to aim the DEEEP STrykeeee effectively. It was loads of fun to send some missiles out at the distant Tsi-Hu and them focus on closer ones.
MISSILES AND SUCH: At first I was frustrated that my missiles now need more than one to kill a Tsi-Hu, but now I enjoy it. I know I can stack missiles to kill one, or spam them on more Tsi-Hu and then blast them with the canon to finish them off. I can see that as we tailor or weapons to have more or less AOE, damage and such in min max type of things, it will be even more fun. Blast a swarm, finish off the weak survivors, or stack up rockets on a mini-boss. It gives a lot of variety with builds.
I also found, in THE BAD, which likely was because I was mostly solo playing, that I was always on the ground to grab resources and never flew up much because of that. So, while it was fun picking them up, it also tied me to the ground. However, in THE GOOD, I was flying around and moving a lot more to engage the widely spawning enemies. I even deeeeeeepe stryyyked.
THE SUPER GLORIOUS FRENZY OF NEAR DEATH AND DINGS DINGS DINGS: I did another solo. Once again HIGH PRAISE for the total random nature. It was glorious and I just barely missed saving my THMPR. Once again, it has an excellent mix of enemies and I was frantically trying to stop the dings as my THMPR got smacked. It was great to have some masses of the white cubes swarming the thumper, so I could not leave it. At the same time, I really had to leave it to deal with the ranged Tsi-Hu. I had to keep swapping weapons, using missiles, using deerereeerp strykkeee, jump jetting up, hopping all around, grabbing the resources...
It was unclear to me what the dome over the THMPR meant.
I agree with others in the post I can no longer see in the forums for some reason that the random dropping of stuff is a nice touch and whatever the "stuff" will ultimately become, the fact that it will serve to make every THMPR enounter even more different from every other one will be great fun.
Glider camera shake intensity at moderate to extreme speed is irritating to the eyes. The twitching side to side is so fast and creates a motion blur which makes me feel compelled to look away. I feel like my eyes are unable to focus on an orientation landmark and are briefly crossing trying to find something. Perhaps the sense of losing focus is due to a lack of objects on the whitebox environment; adding distinguishable shapes should help. All in all, I believe the shake frequency needs to be reduced.
:Thumper Encounter:
The objects falling from the sky is kinda cool but it feels rather unnecessary. The pause and wait can build suspense but it just kinda adds to the delay of combat. Once trees and other objects are in I don't see these falling objects to visually add much to the experience. Maybe the objects should come later in the Thumper encounter to indicate a difficulty increase or gradually add themselves over the course of the encounter rather than all at once. (it'll be a little more chaotic if they fall throughout the encounter).
The thumper encounter combat zone is too large for the current setup. I wouldn't say it's majorly too large but the objects from the sky are so far away from the Thumper there's little to zero interaction. Enemies are also so far away that a simple Missile Swarm removes them no problem long before they're close enough to hit them with the assault rifle accuracy. Obviously adding trees and other doodads to the whitebox will enclose the space but for now spacing is a problem.
Whitebox landscape has nice detailed mountain ranges however the detail is also a bit problematic. The small bumps that create the high detail can stop the player because the step angle is too high. The terrain needs smoothed in areas to avoid small bumps from completely halting players.
Whitebox landscape is realistic however I ponder if the realism will create some pains. The slopes are so steep and verticality so high that traversal is going to be a challenge. Not to say challenging terrain is entirely a bad thing but if the result of the journey does not offset the trouble it's going to feel frustrating. In a way I would call some of the deeper holes in the landscapes 'dead zones'. Thumpers can't mine on the steep slopes and the pits currently have no reason to be down in them...I suspect there will never be a reason to find yourself so far down a hole...? The 'dead zone' space is, more or less, wasted space aside from promoting a sense of landscape realism. Continually these holes are so vast in circumference that I anticipate gliders are going to perform better than mounts in land traversal. Much of Firefall's landscape was smooth and generally flat which made them easy to traverse, quickly memorable, and there were few places a player did not want to end up.
It's a nice tech demo, I'd like to know what all the white boxy things actually are though
Moving around is nice enough, eventually I learnt that I had to be airborne to use most of my abilities. Pressing 'I' brought up my inventory instead of swapping weapons, so something seems wrong there.
Thumping is kinda shrug, I agree the the animation is too short, it's like it's barely scratching the surface.
Being attacked by cubes is shrug. The Tsu Hi, when they appear are ok, but were rare for me.
Still, as a tech demo it's nice, much luck for the kickstarter
I was able to complete the new THMPR encounter solo with relative ease while collecting most of the resources that were mined. The length of the encounter seems fine, but I suspect it would be really easy for 4 players. I can echo Thorp's point about the terrain and the crystals falling. It'll feel very different with actually trees and cover involved. Heck, even a minimap would make it feel different. I don't think a completely textureless, blank environment is the best way to test it, unless it will primarily occur in areas with no natural cover.
The map is very expansive. With Overthrust, getting around still takes some time, but it is by no means quick. The heights are impressive, and I can imagine in a textured world full of flora and fauna, it'd be beautiful both pre- and post-terraform. Getting up there takes some time and effort, like it should.
Speaking of render distance, some of the effects for the THMP-R encounter are visible across the map. I don't know if it was intended, but please keep it. I'd personally love to see this in the final game, so I know where to go for an event.
The assault rifle feels worse now that the Tsi-hu try to dodge. With the increased health, they are harder to kill, but also seem to shoot less and do less damage. I'm not sure what's with the assault rifle. It's always felt different to weapons in other games, and not for good reasons.
I saw that Purple Omniframe in the file months ago, am glad to finally see what it looks like in-game. Even though the model is outdated and due for replacement, please keep that in the game somewhere. It looks so cool. Also, damn you to eternal inflation Toshi, keeping it to yourself.
Bugs > Deepstryking with a roof overhead still causes you to get stuck. It wasn't a reasonable fix for the planking bug, especially since it requires you to close and reopen the demo. > Grummz and one of the devs brought up the weird zig-zagging glider bug. Definitely still there. > Edit: Speaking of issues from previous demos, the issue with the jumpjets stalling and repeatedly firing when you collide with something. Noticed it a lot in New Copa, but it's pretty obvious now when you're scaling the new terrain. > Some areas won't allow you to call down a THMP-R, even when away from the bases. > Some missile explode immediately when firing Missile Swarm. > Can't replicate, but I logged on during the CC and had 0 AR ammo. Reloading set it to zero. The plasma cannon didn't fire, but did make the sound and deduced energy. Unsure if this was client side or what. > The chat is still very mediocre. It doesn't disappear when you hide the UI, but only lets me scroll when the UI is hidden. Hitting TAB to bring up the scoreboard allows me to type, but letting go of TAB leaves the chat open, so I'm typing instead of moving. > Edit: There are some random locations on the map that seem to make the skybox appear as black. See spoiler for image and location where the issue was found.
Note the base on the left side of the map.
Some concerns.
I don't know how this demo will look attract new backers. An untextured demo with a single thing to do doesn't strike like a project in development since 2018/19. I could see how this could be a boon, pushing people interested in the project to save for a completed project at the KS, but I dunno. It needs more, and hopefully the later demos have that. The landscape is impressive at least.
Social Hub demo. When? Has it been postponed? Cancelled? Will it appear in this Whitebox demo down the line? Now that most of the new textures will be revealed at KS, probably needs clarification because it feels cancelled.
Movement options/testing? I thought it was mentioned that part of the new demo was to test some of the new movement options that were added (namely walk-running for Light, and shield-surfing for Heavy). I might be misremembering, but while I can see may cool areas for surfing (when we reach 1,500 backers), there doesn't seem to be anything to test wall-running. It'd be neat to see things prepared and in-game ahead of time for these things so we know they're coming.
Further to the above; skimming. It's been in the Input file since Jan 2020, maybe earlier, and completely missing from the email covering what has and hasn't been done. With a new environment, skimming should be shown off before the final mock-up, especially since the gliding went through multiple iterations (and it still feels soooooooooo good in this demo by the way).
Otherwise, enjoyed it. Just hope to see meaningful things added to the demo and shared with the community before the Kickstarter, and more emphasis put on how the game plays rather than monetization for skins, or how the game and the waifus look.
- love the map size but at the same time myself and Fai had to play marco polo for 10 minutes trying to find each other after barely moving more than 100 squares away from each other (I think we need to have a chief chat hide and go seek edition) the directional for sounds is not accurate and makes it hard to locate individuals. Names disappear after half of viewable distance further increasing difficulty of finding someone and with no map or coordinate system it is very easy to lose teammates in the white washed world considering that you can reduce the size of a person to your aiming dot just by using the overthrust ability to go skyward. There should also only be material nodes appearing in the usable map space but i found a Toshium node on the edge of the physical map behind the invisible wall surrounding the edges of the map that was un reachable meaning it may be possible to find one closer to the invisible wall and have an inaccessible thumping experience on the edge of the maps but that's a lot of ground to cover and will take me more time to explore. Also we found that Grummz gold material seemed thump-able in more places than other materials and that the map may have prejudices against specific materials saying that there is a thumper near by no matter where on the map you try to thump. Although being closer to bases did seem to increase the amount of sites that said thumper nearby.
- Combat is a hassle lol because the cursor and aiming dot love to move like a typewriter while using jet packs and firing to move around and it is completely absurd to try and use the plasma cannon at long ranges while dodging fire and maneuvering around the battle field. also it can be hard to focus the aim of the auto rifle due to the same effect. This is noticed in both viewing modes after sprinting and or jump jetting seeming to relocate and disassociate the camera letting it float from left perspective to right perspective and everywhere in between. It is very hard to aim through your omni frame. Also the plasma cannon recharge is still double charged making it very slow but it is very satisfying to use against the white box bugs that crawl around and die to one shot from it. Other than the camera issue that is not caused by key bindings or any other feature that i can find that can be affected in game by the player not too bad.
-Thumper encounter is awesome love that the portals no longer damage the player making it easier to traverse the battle field and not worry about running into a rift and almost dyeing instantly. But noticed that there are now very large very loud debris coming in with the thumper which I'm not sure of the exact source of unless its been recently updated in the lore book and i just haven't read it but that much space debris might be inconsistent with tera forming a "new" planet. Also, i have attempted to take damage from the debris but had no success and could see issues if you do take damage from it for incoming players to a new thumping area since the debris is completely random where the thumper is in a clearly marked position by the circle that appears in the sky above it. We discovered that there is also a spawn height limit for the tsi hu and that they do not spawn in the bottom of some of the valleys on the map but can spawn on top of a few of the highest debris crystals and then just sit there making for a very easy encounter. Also noticed during the encounter and am unsure if this is intended but rockets can't lock onto the white box bugs making them only killable with deepstryke or with guns at the current moment. Also as mentioned before the tsi hu do occasionally seem to spawn very far from the center of the encounter at higher flat elevations and tend to almost snipe the thumper. Also noticed that tsi hu solely target the thumper and not players and i feel that this is wrong and that half of spawned tsi hu should try to target players otherwise spawning manipulation to funnel towards the thumper is very easy on a more complex map. Love the explosion that a failed thumper makes though but would love to see a thumper health bar because right now its obvious the health bar is very large but its currently unknown. Also there seems to be no visual effect for the bugs attacking the thumper but there is a visual for tsi hu attacking everything and bugs attacking players. Although still enjoyed the thumper picking up all the resources a little better like in Firefall but i do love all the resource animations and love the feeling of collecting all the pretty materials.
-The slide ability currently reveals that we are playing on a massive white box covered desert and i think its funny and cool
-love the new map ceiling that caps out vertical thrust height and prevents players from getting stuck in the top of the map and forces you to glide downward slightly even if only jet packing or using overthrust to sky climb after gliding between ability uses.
-Also noticed that the character in the omni frame has one very short clipped arm with a hand and one very long arm with a hand hanging by her waist she also seems smaller inside the omni frame than in previous developer builds but that could just be me. Also as Fai pointed out a few times while we were playing that some of the characters at the bases which are very cool buildings are clipping into the ground and standing on there knee caps or shins.
-Glad that the Dev's foresaw players trying to jump/mess with the edge of the map and fall off the map and made a map edge extending further then the invisible barrier map edge that is playable in but really wanted to jump off the edge of the world lol. Slightly sad that ther's no more water and that the ground no longer bleeds but am waiting with baited breath for the Kickstarter drop.
-In future playing if I come across anything else I will be sure to post again or update this post.
Lastly but never least THANK you all again Dev and Community teams for all your hard work and the AMAZING product that you have created and are still working on. Great job and keep moving forward!!!!
PS.
Best run time from north to south of map 12min 14 sec sprinting ( with jumpjets for climbing cliffs only and sliding as enabled by terrain only)
In one glide made it from south end of map using only jumpjets to get higher and occasionally trying for more air made it past first two bases but not quite to the third and last base from landing position airial view looking east to west. So maybe 2/3s of the map and can easily glide across whole map with current overthrust ability.
From north to south only end of map using only jumpjets to get higher at start and one continuous glide no attempts for more altitude lasted 6min 44sec and made it about 200 squares past the last base easily 3/4's of the map so depending on start and end point it may be possible to glide the whole length of the map in around 8 or 9 minutes maybe??? with no abilities
1. Teaming mechanics
2. A minimap with waypoints, region names, your location, and your teammates' locations
3. A terminal at the bases that "refines" your resources based on the formulas I posted here https://forums.em8er.com/threads/for-math-nerds.1885/#post-63971
+1
Outside of creating a map or naming areas, dropping a visible beacon from the C menu would be helpful, or being able to /find [playername] someone to see their tag across the map.
Even something like the :loc: command from FF that just shows someone's coordinates would be helpful.
EDIT: Sorry, for clarification, the loc command by default would show your location, but you could also use it in syntax :loc <username>: to locate someone else's coordinates.
